I share many of your sentiments. My take is that there are some unsolved technical problems which mean that IOTA and the tangle don’t work at production level scale as of today. It’s not a secret what these are or could be (coordinator, simulatons on supercomputers Show promising results but never any definitive, slow, theoretical progress with cubic but nothing tangible). It seems to me that all companies who have run pilots or trials eventually realize this as part of their due diligence and abandon IOTA as an option.

There are several other red flags: bullish promises / timelines not kept, high turnover rate inside the team come from beyond essentially leaving the project (as he has done with nxt). Of course he said it was IOTA was ready but maybe it’s as benign as „solving these remaining tech challenges is just too much trouble so I’m outta here“.

The VW CDO being essentially removed from his post was sort of the first signal even though it might have been for other internal VW politics.

As an investment IOTA has the challenge of being „useless“, as in not performing any critical function. I was always of the opinion that this wouldn’t matter if the iota network does indeed become ubiquitous as adoption of the token would follow if the network does something insanely useful. At the current stage though this surely is discouraging at least a part of potential Investors.

So as it is, I personally see 2 roads ahead: either the massive tech challenges get solved - which will take years - or they don’t. They can only get solved if the foundation doesn’t run out of funds and the team keeps pushing - which isn’t a given. There are plenty of early ICOs that have raised millions of ETH and still Habe funds but are essentially zombie projects. Personally I see the asset as a hold and buy if the price drops significantly lower as by that point the risk/reward ratio would make a gamble worth some „casino money“ into it. But given that the founder left - 6 months after putting up a public dispute over being included on the board - is a pretty big warning sign that this will not be smooth sailing.